Then, almost before she knew it, they were again in the midst of Red Wing’s band of young Cheyennes, and she was as much of a prisoner as she had been before.
Wild Bill had disappeared, however, from their midst, and she hoped he would follow and try to release her, for she had heard of him, and knew him to be the friend of any one in distress.
Before day came again, the Cheyennes were in the midst of the village of their friends, who were Cheyennes that had fled to this part of the country after the last Cheyenne war, and had been permitted to remain there.
As soon as he was safe in this village, Barlow had the girl placed in one of the lodges, in care of an old Indian squaw, assuring the girl that it was the best he could do, and that she would not be harmed there. Then he began a search for the old medicine man who was said to have that store of sacred gold nuggets.
He found the medicine man without trouble, for the old fellow had a lodge of immense size not far from the heart of the village, where he mumbled his charms and incantations, and performed the mysterious rites which awed the Cheyennes and gave him so much power over them.
Barlow did not get to enter this lodge. The old man would not permit it, not even when Barlow was accompanied by Red Wing. Thus the young renegade got no chance to see the nuggets.
He knew their story, having overheard it from the lips of the colonel at the fort, the colonel having received it from Buffalo Bill.
The nuggets were all undoubtedly of Aztec origin; but how they had come into the hands of this medicine man was unknown. He had given one of them to Cody, as a sign of his good will and friendship, at a time when the scout had brought him out of a fever, which all his own skill and the skill of the tribe could not combat.
It was that nugget which the scout had presented to Colonel Montrose, of Fort Cimarron. The other nuggets the medicine man sacredly guarded.
The Cheyenne village was thrown into a flutter of excitement and alarm by the coming of the young Cheyennes, for it was expected that troopers would be hot upon their heels.